The influences of demographic and parenting variables on early adolescent moral decisions

by Hutchinson, Claudia Gay.

Abstract (Summary)

The purpose of this study was to determine the relations among parental support
and parental control and parenting style (parental support and parental control), and
moral decisions after controlling for sex, race-ethnicity, and school context. The sample
consisted of 814 students in grades 8 and 9, where 380 were male and 434 were females.
Seventy percent of the students described themselves as African American. Most of the
adolescents lived in urban low-socio-economic communities.
Hypotheses were developed to study relations among the variables of parental
support, parental control, parenting style, and moral decisions as measured by drug
refusal intentions, drug refusal skills, drug use intentions, and tolerance of deviance.
Analysis proceeded in three stages. First, means, standard deviations, and other
descriptive statistics of the criterion and predictor variables were examined. Second,
bivariate correlations among variables were calculated to assess the total relations among
constructs. Third, hierarchal regression analysis were conducted to determine the unique
relations among predictor and criterion variables.
The demographic characteristics––sex, race and school context––were included in
the first block of independent variables. The two parenting behaviors––parental support
and parental control––were included in the second block of independent variables. The
interaction of the two parenting behaviors was calculated (parenting style) and included
in the third block where effects of parental support and parental control were
interdependent.
The analysis revealed that the relations between the demographic variables (sex,
race-ethnicity and school context) and drug refusal intentions, tolerance of deviance and
drug use intentions were nonsignificant. Male was positively related to drug refusal skills.
Parental support was positively related to drug refusal skills and negatively related to
drug use intentions and tolerance of deviance. There was no relation between parental
support and drug refusal intentions. Parental control was negatively related to drug
refusal intentions and positively related to drug use intentions and tolerance of deviance.
There was no relation between parental control and drug refusal skills.
Parenting style was negatively related to drug refusal intentions and marginally
related to drug use intentions. There were no relations between parenting style and drug
refusal skills or tolerance of deviance.
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